DIY Librarian

Google plans to host open access scientific data, according to a blog post at Wired Science.

I work with social science data sets, which are generally not as large as hard science data sets can be, but there are some similar issues.

First among them is getting the researchers who are collecting the data excited about sharing that data. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate data sharing for research projects they fund, but this is often the last step of the research process, conducted when funds are running out or have been exhausted.

Even if the researcher is interested in sharing his or her data, it is not a simple process. Just putting raw data online doesn’t do any good without appropriate documentation, description, and access tools. In addition, social science datasets usually involve human participants, so any identifying information must be stripped from the data, or the data must be restricted to researchers who have signed usage agreements and put appropriate security measures in place to protect participants’ personal information. Google does not exactly have a spotless record when it comes to privacy protection.

Archiving and preservation, however, is where I’m really not sure I trust Google. As I mentioned, data dissemination often comes at a stage in the research when funding has run out, so free looks good. But will Google’s free service continue to exist if Google someday decides that it is not a good business investment? Or what happens if (gasp!) Google goes out of business, or is sold to another company?

Libraries and institutional archives have a good track record on privacy and on long-term preservation. Google may provide increased open access, but I don’t think it can eliminate the need for solid, continually funded institutional data archiving.

It’s conference season again, and I’ll bet that most conferences will include a session where attendees can work on their elevator speeches.

I worked on mine at the SLA Leadership Summit in January, but it hasn’t gotten much use since our elevator’s been on the fritz. (It’s difficult to talk about much of anything when you’re climbing 6 flights of stairs.) I’ve decided that instead I will work on my plane speech.

After the last few conferences I’ve attended, I’ve sat next to a talker on the plane. The talker invariably asks lots of questions upon learning that I’ve been at a library conference.

Aren’t libraries obsolete? Isn’t everything on the internet? What do I think of Google? What do librarians talk about at library conferences?

This is a perfect opportunity to talk about why libraries are important, the good and the bad of Google, and dispel a few librarian myths (why yes, I do have a master’s in that). I have a captive and interested audience. I’ve just been at a conference talking about all of these issues.

After attending the APLIC-I conference this year, I sat next to a man who was curious about Google. Having just heard Siva Vaidhyanathan talk about the Google book scanning project, I was prepared to talk about the pros and cons.

If you sit next to me on the plane coming back from SLA, watch out! If you don’t want to know about libraries, you might want to bring a book, or break out the crossword from the in-flight magazine.

Yankee in Canada has made an SLA 2007 conference map using Google My Maps. My Maps lets you create a customized map, adding markers for places already in Google Maps as well as your own markers.

I tried out My Maps for a trip I’m planning with my family. I added the hotel where we’re staying, the restaurant where we’re eating dinner, some bookstores we want to visit, and other landmarks. This sure beats jotting down all the addresses and lugging around several maps that each have some of the things we need. (I haven’t made the map public for privacy reasons.)

Since this trip is to run the Boston Marathon, my next step is to try to combine it with a Boston Marathon Interactive Map I found on the Boston Globe site, also made using Google Maps. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is a simple way to do this (yet…Google seems to add new features every other day), but I can at least figure out where the mile markers on the course are.

Postscript: Just after I posted this, I found that the Boston Globe has added a course map where readers can contribute their favorite spots for watching the race. Only one spot had been added when I looked, but this has a lot of potential. Now, if only I could import it into My Maps and add notes for my family!